


Glimpses: Past

by Thistlerose



Series: Glimpses [1]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Backstory, Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Dysfunctional Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 07:33:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1296670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thistlerose/pseuds/Thistlerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nine-year-old Ezri Tigan doesn't know what she wants to do with her life, but she knows she has to get off New Sydney.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glimpses: Past

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QueenRiley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenRiley/gifts).



Not for the first time, nine-year-old Ezri Tigan wished that people still used doors that slammed. She’d read about them in books, and seen them in classic holo films. In her imagination, the dull thunderclap of a slammed door seemed like the perfect end to an argument that couldn’t be won with words. Her mother probably wouldn’t have liked it, she reflected sourly; but then again, there wasn’t much that Yanas Tigan _did_ like.

It was the reason Ezri hardly ever saw her dad anymore, and the reason she was determined to get off New Sydney as soon as she could.

Well, that and the fact that she didn’t really like most of the kids she went to school with. Most of their parents were miners like Ezri’s, and a lot of them talked about mining like it was all they could ever imagine doing. Which was fine – Ezri had nothing against mining in principle – but some of them were kind of ... mean. They didn’t make fun of her spots, but they did say things like, “My family’s gonna take all your family’s pergium” or “My dad’s gonna beat up your dad.”

The threats themselves didn’t really bother Ezri; she wasn’t sure about her dad, but she felt fairly certain that her mother could handle herself. Rather, it was the spirit behind them. It all just seemed so pointlessly _mean_.

And isolating.

Ezri slouched against her headboard, pouting at the painted stars on her bedroom ceiling, arms crossed over her chest. 

Her mother didn’t understand how lonely she was. She thought Ezri was just being difficult when she started talking about how much she hated New Sydney, and how much she wanted to be _anywhere_ else in the galaxy but here. Her brothers sort of understood, but they were her _brothers_ ; Janel thought she was just a baby, and Norvo ... Norvo _was_ a baby. Practically, anyway.

Ezri sighed. She could feel the anger burning in her chest. She pictured her anger looking like a sun, rapidly devouring its own hydrogen, converting it into helium until it just blew up and consumed everything in its orbit, then shrank back into a cold, dead star. A white dwarf, right?

Was that how it worked?

Ezri’s head lolled against her pillows. She wanted to look it up in one of her astrophysics texts, but her PADD was over on her nightstand. She could reach it easily from where she sat, but do that she’d have to unfold her arms and she wasn’t read to do that.

So she looked around her small bedroom. Her shelves, she thought, were miserably bare. She ought to have souvenirs from interesting places like Earth or the Trill home world, but her mother never her took her and her brothers anywhere, and her dad never sent them anything. _Someday,_ she thought. 

She did have a few dolls and stuffed animals; Janel teased her about them, but she couldn’t yet bear to give them away. When she was younger – though not _that_ much younger – she’d liked to pretend they all had distinct personalities and could talk. Quietly, in her head – like telepathy. They comforted her, told her soothing things when her parents started arguing, or when her mother yelled at her brothers, or when her mother yelled at _her_...

Just pretend, of course, but it had helped.

Maybe that was what being joined was like, Ezri thought now. Except that, instead of plush Alvanian cave sloths and crocheted glommers, she would have _real_ people talking to her. Or people who’d been real, at any rate. 

That must be nice.

Or weird. 

As she considered what it must be liked to be joined, Ezri felt the tension slowly drain from her body. Her jaw unclenched and her arms loosened. 

It must be weird being joined, but maybe in a nice way. Having people to talk to. Or was it just their memories that you could tap into? Ezri wasn’t sure. No one in her family had been – or ever would be, said her mother – joined. Like doors that slammed, all she knew about joined Trills was from books.

She doubted she’d ever find out what it was really like, but it was nice to imagine.


End file.
